The emergency government of Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti,
which was unveiled Wednesday, isn't the first administration of
technocrats Italy has tapped to pull it out of trouble. It does,
however, face the highest stakes.

Twice in the 1990s, Italy's
governments were led by or made up of economists, legal experts and
other specialists who successfully carried out economic or political
overhauls that Italy's fractured political establishment couldn't pull
off.

But the challenges confronting Mr. Monti—as well as those
facing the new technocratic prime minister of Greece, economist and
former European central banker Lucas Papademos—are a magnitude greater.